Stuff and junk
It occurred to me this evening that in that list of movie quotes, I totally forgot this movie exchange:
R: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
G: No, no, no... Death is "not." Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not be on a boat.
R: I've frequently not been on boats.
G: No, no... What you've been is not on boats.
We watched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead tonight--as the play is on the MA reading list, I've been thinking about it lately. In addition to laughing my head off, as I usually do watching it, on this viewing I was struck by just how many big ideas it takes on. I had never noticed the preoccupation with memory throughout, which is interesting coupled with the preoccupation with death. I now want to take this bit:
Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occured to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occured to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squawling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, theres only one direction. And time is its only measure.
and compare it to Lacan.
Anyway. On a completely unrelated note, it was 17 when we left for school this morning. The cold actually worked to get me out of bed this morning--though my first class wasn't until 12:20 today, had I slept in, I would have had to wait for the bus. Instead, I got up, went in with Mark, and started my day at the nice, warm gym. It's getting down to 8 this evening, which I find ridiculous--the temperature just shouldn't be a number smaller than my shoe size.
I'm slowly warming up to my classes this semester; it's not nearly as great as last semester. I'm taking the required 505 "Teaching First Year Composition" class, which started off not that great, but is slowly getting better. The first day of class, the Peter Lorre-looking, new professor seemed like he thought he was teaching a law school class or something--very confrontational, strangely controlling. And there's a ton of work, tons of reading about pedagogy. There has been such an emphasis on the importance of the "Academic Discourse Community" that I have decided that I want an AC/DC t-shirt, to signify my intention to be a member of it.
I'm also taking a Gothic novel class, which has 24 required novels. That professor admitted that she hasn't read most of the novels, and doesn't know if it can be done. Oi. I've read The Castle of Otranto, and most of The Romance of the Forest so far; I'm doing a presentation in a few weeks on The Necromancer. It's an okay class, and will help me both by having a good grounding in the gothic, and in the gothic influence on Southern writing, but it's just not that exciting, to me.
And, I'm taking Feminist Theory--the syllabus is mostly the list of works that I want to have read, but probably wouldn't just go read on my own (I mean, I'm never going to motivate myself to read that much Freud, or Cisoux,or what have you), but the class is a split undergrad/graduate class, and the first classes were awfully boring--though we read Vindication of the Rights of Women, the discussion somehow derailed to a long debate over whether it's feminist to wear high heels. Urgh. Fortunately, Thursday, the four grad students in the class decided amongst ourselves to step it up a bit, and the discussion was much more interesting. The reading is great, but a ton, and unfortunately, we seem to be barely touching on it in class. For example, the extra graduate readings for this week included one that made me really glad that I read so much Foucault over Christmas, because it referred quite a bit to his History of Sexuality. But, we never got to discuss it in class.
Last semester, I read Proust and Faulkner and Shakespeare and Marlowe--all gorgeous and packed language. This semester, not so much. I miss delving into the language. However, in my other reading, I discovered Jeff Mann, a queer Appalachian poet and author whose work I'm quite infatuated with. That and my working on conference writing has reminded me why I wanted to focus on Southern and Appalachian writing to begin with, and I'm now thinking of returning to my undergrad thesis on magical realism in Appalachian lit for my master's thesis. I think there's more there I'd enjoy doing, and I've already got a start on it.
And, my other happy thoughts are of England--I went and talked to the professor in charge of the three-week trip to Stratford and London today. I am so looking forward to it. A week in Stratford, two weeks in London. Plays and lectures and we'll even get to see Shakespeare's second best bed.
Happy three-day weekend to everyone. I certainly need it!
R: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
G: No, no, no... Death is "not." Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not be on a boat.
R: I've frequently not been on boats.
G: No, no... What you've been is not on boats.
We watched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead tonight--as the play is on the MA reading list, I've been thinking about it lately. In addition to laughing my head off, as I usually do watching it, on this viewing I was struck by just how many big ideas it takes on. I had never noticed the preoccupation with memory throughout, which is interesting coupled with the preoccupation with death. I now want to take this bit:
Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occured to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occured to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squawling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, theres only one direction. And time is its only measure.
and compare it to Lacan.
Anyway. On a completely unrelated note, it was 17 when we left for school this morning. The cold actually worked to get me out of bed this morning--though my first class wasn't until 12:20 today, had I slept in, I would have had to wait for the bus. Instead, I got up, went in with Mark, and started my day at the nice, warm gym. It's getting down to 8 this evening, which I find ridiculous--the temperature just shouldn't be a number smaller than my shoe size.
I'm slowly warming up to my classes this semester; it's not nearly as great as last semester. I'm taking the required 505 "Teaching First Year Composition" class, which started off not that great, but is slowly getting better. The first day of class, the Peter Lorre-looking, new professor seemed like he thought he was teaching a law school class or something--very confrontational, strangely controlling. And there's a ton of work, tons of reading about pedagogy. There has been such an emphasis on the importance of the "Academic Discourse Community" that I have decided that I want an AC/DC t-shirt, to signify my intention to be a member of it.
I'm also taking a Gothic novel class, which has 24 required novels. That professor admitted that she hasn't read most of the novels, and doesn't know if it can be done. Oi. I've read The Castle of Otranto, and most of The Romance of the Forest so far; I'm doing a presentation in a few weeks on The Necromancer. It's an okay class, and will help me both by having a good grounding in the gothic, and in the gothic influence on Southern writing, but it's just not that exciting, to me.
And, I'm taking Feminist Theory--the syllabus is mostly the list of works that I want to have read, but probably wouldn't just go read on my own (I mean, I'm never going to motivate myself to read that much Freud, or Cisoux,or what have you), but the class is a split undergrad/graduate class, and the first classes were awfully boring--though we read Vindication of the Rights of Women, the discussion somehow derailed to a long debate over whether it's feminist to wear high heels. Urgh. Fortunately, Thursday, the four grad students in the class decided amongst ourselves to step it up a bit, and the discussion was much more interesting. The reading is great, but a ton, and unfortunately, we seem to be barely touching on it in class. For example, the extra graduate readings for this week included one that made me really glad that I read so much Foucault over Christmas, because it referred quite a bit to his History of Sexuality. But, we never got to discuss it in class.
Last semester, I read Proust and Faulkner and Shakespeare and Marlowe--all gorgeous and packed language. This semester, not so much. I miss delving into the language. However, in my other reading, I discovered Jeff Mann, a queer Appalachian poet and author whose work I'm quite infatuated with. That and my working on conference writing has reminded me why I wanted to focus on Southern and Appalachian writing to begin with, and I'm now thinking of returning to my undergrad thesis on magical realism in Appalachian lit for my master's thesis. I think there's more there I'd enjoy doing, and I've already got a start on it.
And, my other happy thoughts are of England--I went and talked to the professor in charge of the three-week trip to Stratford and London today. I am so looking forward to it. A week in Stratford, two weeks in London. Plays and lectures and we'll even get to see Shakespeare's second best bed.
Happy three-day weekend to everyone. I certainly need it!